The first issue of Condé Nast Traveller in the UK is missing its original back page. A few days before hitting the shelves, its launch editor, Sarah Miller, received a 6am phonecall while in Martha's Vineyard. It was August 31 1997 and the caller informed her Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed had died in a Paris underpass. "I put the phone down and five minutes later thought, 'No, the back page'," says Miller.

The page was of Portofino in Italy. "We very deliberately referred to it is as the most fabulous view and this is where they holidayed," she adds. After phonecalls to the printers and Condé Nast boss Nicholas Coleridge, the page was changed.

A decade and 3,301,374,000 pages later, the magazine publishes its birthday issue on Thursday. The glossy has won 39 awards, most recently the PPA Consumer Lifestyle Magazine of the Year 2007. It is also the highest circulating consumer travel magazine in the UK, recording its 18th consecutive increase - with an ABC of 85,011 (January-June 2007). Miller, 47, has been at the helm throughout.

There have been wobbles along the way, most notably September 11. "We didn't know what the audience was thinking, but I wouldn't have got to where I am without plans through A to Z, and one of those plans was 'what if?'," she says.

However, the 2001 November issue was one of the highest sellers. Miller says this may have been due to people seeking a distraction from the 9/11 media coverage. "It was the booking period leading up to 2002 which was trickier in terms of editorial, because it wasn't clear where people were planning to travel."

Miller first honed her editing skills at Cosmopolitan, under the legendary Deirdre McSharry, in the early 1980s and then joined Sally Brampton's launch of British Elle. "Suddenly we went from a slick office machine of Cosmo to sitting on the carpet with one telephone, five of us plotting the future of a magazine," Miller recalls.

In 1987 she moved to the Sunday Times, firstly as deputy editor of the Look section and then as assistant editor of the magazine. This was during the "halcyon days" of Philip Clarke's stewardship. She worked alongside the late Les Daly, who was "something special", Brian Jackman and Sarah Spankie, whom she later poached from the Independent in 1997 to be her deputy on Traveller.

It was the future Evening Standard editor Veronica Wadley, then the features editor of the Daily Telegraph, and her boss, Max Hastings, who enticed Miller from Wapping to Canary Wharf, where she rose to features editor of the Saturday magazine. "When you are starting out as a journalist if you don't watch how other people do it, then you don't learn anything," she says. "I was fantastically lucky being included by these very non-hierarchical groups of people, so I got to look and learn a lot."

From Liz Jobey, her boss at the Sunday Times' Look section, Miller learned about copy and caring for your contributors ("Liz was a writer's editor.") From Hastings, "proper journalism and getting your facts straight, which we are all in danger of losing". Miller adds that she owes a lot to Emma Soames, her mentor at the Telegraph. "Emma believed work should be fun. Yes you're professional. Yes you're good. Yes, you're dedicated, and Emma was dedicated. But you also have to make it fun." Though there is fun somewhere below the surface at Traveller magazine, visitors to its Hanover Square offices in London describe it as a "library". Fact checking and dealing with different time zones make it an intensive place to work and Miller's "brilliant" subeditors are often "overstretched".

Before launching Traveller, Miller had little travel journalism experience. But that fitted with the magazine's central tenet - travel from the reader's point of view. Condé Nast wanted to avoid "travel hackery". In 1997 travel writing was the domain of a coterie of freelance travel journalists who spent their whole time travelling and "didn't see it from the reader's perspective", and editorial staff who had been given a free holiday in lieu of a pay rise or bonus. "Travel desks of many newspapers, with some notable exceptions, did operate like that at that point," says Miller. "I was determined that we wouldn't."

Traveller uses a mixture of writers, including novelists. William Boyd wrote about France in the first issue and Will Self has piece on Easter Island in the 10th anniversary issue. Columnists such as Zoë Heller and reporters such as John Davidson and Russell Miller have contributed in the past.

Miller is a staunch advocate of what former Times editor Harold Evans calls "truth in travel". Traveller pays for all its own flights and accommodation and has never "knowingly" published something that is the result of a group press trip. "It is uniform and controlled by the PR company," she says. "Travel isn't a controlled experience. It is what happens to you."

Advertising has a role in the magazine's ability to tell it as it is. Although travel ads are still its "bread and butter", half of the ad revenue comes from elsewhere. "I didn't consciously plot that, but one of the wonderful things about thinking about travel as a lifestyle product is that a good 50% of advertising comes from luxury goods advertising," says Miller. The average household income of its readers is £100,000 a year.

The "power" of the Traveller brand is such that it has had an impact on the global tourism industry, Miller points out. One example she gives is a critical article about a Sandy Lane hotel by Zoë Heller. The result was changes by the owners. "Did anyone pull their advertising? - no," says Miller. "Well OK, we brought their standards up. They're much better, as a hotel they are superb."

Traveller's influence also contributed to her proudest moment. Using her contacts in the travel industry as well as in the media, Miller organised a fundraising dinner at the Four Seasons hotel, London, in aid of the 2004 Boxing day tsunami relief effort. "We made £250,000 in one night," she says. "It nearly killed me but it was something I had to do. The brand and power of the magazine meant that everybody was willing to get involved."

Other career highs have also involved organising something from scratch. "Launching a magazine is the best experience you'll have anywhere," she says. "You don't know what you can't do and because of that you are willing to try anything. Of course you are scared witless. But it's a fantastically optimistic moment and I'm a born optimist."

Launches also break status barriers in work "because you are not saying this my domain and this your domain. It's everyone's domain, we've all got the interests of the magazine at heart," adds Miller, who interviewed Traveller's first art director at 7am at her kitchen table.

The anniversary issue includes the 10 major changes to the travel world over the decade. Among which is, of course, the web. "What the internet has done is turn Joe Bloggs into a travel writer," she says. "The point is, as a discriminating editor with a discriminating audience, do I want Joe Bloggs in the magazine?"

Of course, Miller would like to broaden the magazine's appeal and the internet is a way of doing that. However, the website will remain for the foreseeable future less important than the magazine. Traveller will still hire dedicated writers to write the copy and likewise photographers to take the pictures. "You can't be everything to all people," argues Miller. "And that is what the internet encourages you to be."